Recent Updates to Power Apps you should know about

recently I broke a bunch of little features of rolled out into powerapps it kind of keep showing up here and there but none of them have been big enough to make their own video so I thought today what we'll do is just kind of run through all of these in one quick video right so we're talking about the host object we're gonna talk about comments we'll talk about having multiple editors in there and we're able to talk about the little Annoying change where you can't directly reference some of the objects like you used to sound like fun well let's just switch over to my desktop and take a look if I would start with here is this idea of having multiple people in the app at the same time so you can see I mount a really complicated app called qqqq with some random stuff in it and you might notice up here in the top right it says look Jennifer Hammond if we hover over there it says she's currently viewing the app so what's happened here is I've shared the app right so me Jennifer and Chewie are all co-owners and so Jennifer currently just has the app open now keep in mind that as a viewer of the app it is read only she can't edit the app but she can see what's going on she can tell what screen I'm on and things like that so let's take a look at what the experience would be like so we're gonna do is we'll jump over here and log in as Chewie we're going to say let's edit this app so here it goes it's loading and then it wants to check my data connection so say hello and so you can see the pop-up book it's telling hey the app is read only uh because someone else is editing control when they close the app you'll be able to edit we can just say got it we can say don't show more but I'm gonna have to redo the demos I'll leave it alone for now if we say got it now we can click in here and we can see that for Chewie it is read only right so what you see here is your status but if he hovers over me he can see that I'm editing every hovers over Jennifer he can see that she's viewing you can also see what screens that they are on so as they move around in the app he could see those things now if you want it if you hover here and you click he then has an option here to send me an email or chat in teams right because it's kind of evoke either one of those uh tools but we don't really need to contact me right here he knows how to contact me okay but so Chewie's gonna sit here the yellow bars gonna be at the top the whole time now if we jump over here and if I say hey I'm going to work on screen three now all right so I'm into screen three and so then after a moment it usually takes about a minute like it's not real time like if you've done this in Microsoft Word where like everything is like showing up in real time it's uh not going to show up that quick but it will kind of go here in about a minute usually and while we're waiting on that minute like if I'm gonna go over here and I'm just going to insert a rectangle who cares right so notice I have now changed screens and made an edit now if we jump just Chewie like I said in a moment it will switch it'll show my face down here on top of this but what's important to understand also is notice that it doesn't like there you go there's my face and if we go to screen three notice that we don't see that rectangle that we just put there so the reason for that is because the like I said the changes are not real time what's going to happen in just a moment is it's going to say hey Shane made changes do you want to refresh to see those so I hit pause until that happens actually I'm not going to hit pause well I mean I did hit pause and I realized that I'm a Dodo brain so I could sit here forever it's not going to update me so the only way from Chewie to see the changes is we go back over here right so the changes that Shane's making in real time like him moving doesn't show up and you can see that apparently Jennifer closey up when I was doing this demo you don't see those so if I want Chewie to see my changes I've got to go up here and save the app right so now I'm going to hit save right this is all it gives me remember the orange bars kind of cue that it's me or my pretty face over here whichever one you want and so as soon as it finishes saving okay now it's done saving now we're gonna go over here okay and so now in about a minute it's going to tell Chewie that Shane has made changes and we'll see what that looks like so now I'm going to pause for real okay so in like 40 something seconds um all sudden we got this pop-up right other people made changes the app you are no longer working on the latest version you can refresh to see the latest and so right before we hit refresh notice their phrasing here other people may change the app you are no longer working on the latest version I think this is kind of a hint that they're probably going to eventually let us both edit the app at the same time that's my hint or my guess though right I don't have any proof of that or if they said it I missed it but I I this to me kind of implies that they're working towards multiple editors anyway so now we're going to say refresh and then it's going to say do you want to save your changes I don't have any changes so we're just going to say don't save if Chewie did make changes while he's in read only he would have to do a save as we'll look at that in just a second but we're just going to say don't save here so it's going to refresh and now if we're jumping here and now if we look on screen three we would see shanes and of course we have the same changes Okay so let's be making changes how should we make a change we'll have him insert a date picker on the screen so if Julie makes a change remember it's read only it's try to tell him not to do this but it's letting him so now if Chewie tries to hit save it's going to tell you hey it's read only you can either ignore your changes or save a copy be careful with this right like you know I like what they're doing here but it is a little awkward I think at times like I can't really imagine a world where I'd want Chewie in here watching me make changes but he'd only see the changes when I actually hit save but yeah he's seeing in real time or real time ish what screen I'm on you can see it Jennifer's in here I don't know like this is one of those features that I think is interesting I think it's building to something cooler and more exciting but today it's not super interesting in reality now there's one other thing Jennifer left again I don't know what Jennifer's doing I told her just to leave it open all afternoon but what do I know something else I'll show you that did happen a couple times when I was testing so let's go over here and let's pretend like my browser you know crash refresh re-authenticate right so I have the app open I'm the editor and so if I refresh we know that like this powerapps doesn't know that I left right I didn't leave cleanly like if I just hard close the app or hard close the browser Tab and so if I do this it's going to be an experience like we're used to right so it warns me read only uh oh but if you look this app is read only because you me already have the editing control elsewhere it doesn't know because I didn't cleanly close that other session so in this case I would just need to override and so then now I'm back you can see right here I am back into an editing experience like I was expecting to be okay so keep that in mind also if I do close out of here so let's just say back all right so we're going to leave cleanly this time as me okay so now that I've left cleanly now over here you know Chewie's not going to know right away but if we wait a few seconds all right so then after you know once again it's it's somewhere between 30 seconds in a minute usually all right this app is read only you can try taking any control by refreshing the page so what this is saying is that hey I see that Shane is not editing anymore right Jennifer's still in there she's still read only but since um you know there's no one editing if I want to take over editing there's not a button to do it I would literally just have to refresh my browser so I'll say reload or of course I could have closed out properly back in but you know that would have been too much effort we just hit refresh and now I land in the app and I am the editor of the app or Chewie I should say Chewie is now the editor of the app right so you can kind of in out in out in the messaging you know like they're not in your face pop-ups like you might have wanted right like it was a pretty minor oil change there but it is worth noting right so let's get out of here's Chewie um don't save I don't know what Chewie thinks he did but We're Not Gonna Save we're gonna leave right sometimes when you refresh it does confuse it and so then back over here is me let's open this back up and let's switch gears and talk about another feature that won't take as long and that is this new ability to leave comments in your app so one of the things we can do now in powerapps is up here in the if we look on the top right we've got this ability to add a comments Pane and so you can add comments wherever you want or if you want to add them more specifically or if I want to be more directly I want to add a comment for label four I can click on it here and say new comments okay so comment would be like you know it's for the demo so it's just a way to leave comments I I've always kind of preferred just to put you know code comments so I would have went into this text box probably and just said hey up here at the top I would have done this this is for the demo like that but the nice thing about these comments if you look now you can see this little um Mark here right so this is telling me that screen one has a column if we go to screen two it had one about chewy editing the screen as well so you have the ability to have comments show up in your app now I will also say you know I could reply but like done I guess I should have done this as Chewie um so here we go here's chewy oh back in let's edit so you got it so if it goes here and so he can go right here and just say done and then press the little button and so his comments in there and then X Out of This Is Me kind of Click out oh there you go so as fast as we can do it right so those do happen basically in real time right that that didn't require me saving didn't require me refreshing that just showed up so the comments do fly pretty quick that's a pro for comments with comments here that you might have noticed like I didn't at mention Chewie like why not right that doesn't work as far as I can tell maybe Microsoft can tell me what I'm doing wrong but I would say if I say at chewy right there's Chewie the dog that's him and then I say good boy I just want to give chewy a good boy and then you press post reply right so depending on its mood I either will lock up my browser session completely or like lock up this pain so I basically have to get out and back in to get to work sometimes I'll get this and it's like hey these people don't have access you just saw Chewie leave a comments you saw tweet edit the app Chewie has access but whatever right so then we'll say share and notify and I just get something went wrong this happens whether I'm doing it for someone that already has access like cat doesn't have access to the app I tried the same thing I get the same weird experience I have had zero luck without mentioning so maybe when Microsoft watches this they will call me up and tell me how to fix it but as of right now I don't think app mentioning works at all um so hopefully if you have a different you know experience leave it below or if you just think I'm great for telling you things that don't work leave me a like I know okay so anyway that is the downside of this is the ad stuff doesn't work like I found it's different experiences too like so for me at least it kind of fails cleanly usually if I go over here and be like hey Chewie says Hey I want to add a message to Shane right hi Dad and so then Chewie does this anyway I've waited like 30 seconds you can see like the little message popped up in there that I don't have access I'm the one that created the app I have access and it's like freaked out so this is one of those scenarios now where I just have to get all the way out and back in because the comment pane is just angry at life at this point so there you can see white little X is grayed out like it's mad so comments where I am not using them but if you do use them just don't mention someone figure out how it works it doesn't work for me next up we'll switch back over is me and let's talk about the host feature okay so the host feature this is a new object inside a powerapps on the screen here if we say insert a label you can now type in host and then do a DOT and so we've got access to the browser user agent the OS type the session ID and the Tenant ID so a lot of people have asked for IP address I don't know why they didn't give it to us but you know we got some things such as progress so this you can see like there's my browser stuff actually let's switch to screen three I mean screen one and so here you can see that I went ahead and pulled in all of these um pieces just like that but so you can see look there's a browser user agent so like are you using it in a browser using the powerapps app where you're using it OS type is Windows come on my local machine my session ID so that's the instance like if you were ever troubleshooting like you're like hey I have this bug's like what's your session ID that's it tenant ID that's kind of you know unique for my whole tenant but it would not change from app to app so those are the different things that you can get from host right now and like I want you to see so here's me the same thing same screen opened up on my iPhone so you can see that it's very similar you can see I'm running oh um iOS 16.5 there um you know and just the different IDs there so this is what you're going to be able to get exposure to I have not found a use for it yet the only thing I can come up with is if maybe you were trying to code around like we know that sometimes some of those like evil Samsung Android phones just have some weird peculiar bugs so maybe if you're trying to code something for one of those you want to know or you could maybe use this and be like hey if their window if their type is Windows you know it's in a browser and so like you wouldn't be able to use load data and save data the same way that you use low data and save data on an iOS or Android maybe some of those type of things are you know being used your decision making I don't know I I don't have an actual scenario where I want to use this or have used it but I wanted you to know it was there and speaking of things I want you to know they're there remember go to training.powerapps911.com right if you're enjoying this you would probably enjoy some of my proper training classes we have live training classes we have on-demand training classes we have Power Platform University a six-month immersive program with mentors and class projects and all types of like proper training is crazy go check it all out now there's two things left here uh so one the next one here this is a little bit of a change that has upset a few people but so if you have a bunch of variables right so I just made a button to create me some variables and some collections so now in order to if you want to view those directly I would typically just go into bar globe and make hey what do you got oh you're blink right now I haven't pressed this button let's press the button hold down the ALT key press button but now we can see that like what's in there the data type uh same thing in my collection and so I can kind of expand this out see what's going on right that's typically how I look at variables and collections so this next change has never affected me but it used to be you go to the view menu and then view them and kind of had a screen that we'd have for the last five years they finally updated it so if you look over here on the left you've got variables it should actually say variables and collections but it's too big to write and so here you can look and say all right well like Global variables all right you have one called VAR Global it's a text it's currently set to high mom um and then if you go here you go to definitions this is all the places that you are directly um setting it right so saying this is all the places that you're setting the variable uses these are places that you're using it a direct use like we have here in screen three label two text if we click on it'll take us there is we've set the text property be VAR Global right we are directly referencing that variable in this code right that's the most common thing indirect uses if you've ever wondered what those are is in this case you can see that I said hey if Label 2 text equals hi Mom then write the word yes here if not no so powerapps is saying all right you want me to look at label two dot tax well label two dot text is that variable so that's an indirect use of the variable this is the power app showing off how smart it is it understands two steps away that you're using that variable so indirect uses not as big of a deal but I wanted a little confusing for newbies what that is so that's what that is so we have the same thing that's Global variables context variables works exactly the same way component variables would be the same way as well if we had any of those collections this is when people get miffed at and I don't know why but I know that they do like if we click on cool stuff here like if you click nothing really happens expanders don't work but if you click here and click the ellipses and then say view table you get a pop-up and now I can scroll through and I can see all my Hundred rows there's 100 or I can say call employees and so it's showing me that table now it is a little goofy I'll scroll back up oh scrolling up and stuff um I don't know if people get mad because maybe the the column headers doesn't freeze maybe that's something that upsets people I forget but here you can see like age is 29 like that makes total sense but like if we go look at um favorite color that little symbol was telling me that this is a record it's being stored inside that field right not super obvious that's what it is and so if you click on it then it would show you the value of blue like that's the way I would expect that to work um but it is a little bit of a clunky experience because that doesn't really make sense so that's a record to me and then the back to go backwards is hidden over here in plain sight keeping their proud tradition of hiding things I also probably don't really care for the fact that the rows are so tall but it's just trying to show me all this data so I get one of the rows are so tall but those should probably be truncated I don't know anyway this is the new experience for finding them love it hate it I don't care I almost never ever use it I am almost always going over here and you know if I want to know what's in my particular variable oh take me back see now I'm lost I like to be in the tree view I get lost when I'm on the tree view right I'm just back over here be like what's in bar context oh yeah it says hi Stacy hi Stacy um so that is how that works and if I want to figure out where High Stacy or VAR context was being used I just say copy and then I'd use the little find and replace here there you go now while we're talking about controls I did do a video recently on the new custom or the new modern controls or I'll put a link up there I'm not going to do that in this particular video but it was worth mentioning because you might be interested in those those are newer also I guess when we're plugging videos there's also a new template for galleries like that was a change but that change was enough that I kind of got put into a video so it's up there as well last thing and this is probably the change they made the longest go so you've probably already ran into it but say that if I go back to the tree view if I wanted to edit the color of this button right I'm gonna go here as if I want to set it to Green what am I going to do I'm gonna go here to Phil I'm not going to use that and I want to I just want to type in green this worked for the last five years a couple months ago they took this away from us [Music] now what you have to do if you're right but Shane I know the Green's a thing you're right but all of these objects now you've always got to be more explicit say I say color dot and now there's green okay so if you're having any problems in your apps or like you know if you're like me you got muscle memory I'm just typing the word green it's now color dot green the good news if you have existing apps they fix this they Auto replaced all your code everywhere except in your comments if you haven't comment it out they didn't fix it but all of your working code they fix all the greens should become color.green so you shouldn't have to do anything with this this just is one of those ones that challenges people with strong muscle memory it's like Shane I don't care great then you are not me so congrats so that's what I've got for today hopefully you enjoyed this kind of quick ish overview right like I think that whole multi-editor thing there's so many old facets right we spent a little extra time there the rest of these features are just nice to know things I think but hopefully they helped you if you got questions comments leave them below remember if you want to take training with me like that I like you liking the video do and of course we always do full-on Consulting here power apps 911 so with that I'm going to say thanks and have a great day

Channel: Shane Young

Views: 21,109

Keywords: Shane Young, powerapps911, PowerApps, Power Apps, learn powerapps, powerapps tutorial, microsoft power apps, power apps new features, powerapps comments, powerapps comment box, powerapps host, power apps code editor, powerapps read-only, Microsoft PowerApps, PowerApps tutorial, PowerApps updates, multiple editors, PowerApps comments, PowerApps host feature, viewing variables, viewing collections, PowerApps training, PowerApps new features, PowerApps 2023, PowerApps changes

Id: iYrOtjHfGqc

Length: 19min 41sec (1181 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023